Okay… The Mercy Kill cover has been tweaked. The ships appear the same, but the background has been tweaked – the ‘gray’ background will be silver when printed. It seems a bit overdone to me: you know Coco Chanel’s old axiom about always removing one accessory before you leave the house? I think it applies here. Maybe it’ll look better in actual silver? Still, I don’t think it’ll hurt Aaron Allston’s sales figures, and we’ve certainly seen worse.
Nonfiction. Knights Archive spotted Steve Sansweet’s next book, Star Wars: The Ultimate Action Figure Collection: 35 Years of Characters, on Amazon. Rancho Obi-wan publicist Consetta Parker confirms, as well as giving us a look at the production. Amazon gives an October 17 release date.
Essential Guides. With The Essential Guide To Warfare just a week away, there’s already a brief review from Knight’s Archive and an interview with Jason Fry at EU Cantina.
Fate of the Jedi. Roqoo Depot’s Skuldren takes a look at the series as a whole. Meanwhile, as you may have heard, Apocalypse made the New York Times’ bestseller list.
Hey, librarians! You can contact DK to hold a “Summer of Star Wars” day in June or July. By the by, we don’t recommend handing kids Fate of the Jedi.
I’m dubious about the silver. Seems like someone at Del Ray just discovered the metallic swatch book.
In my job I often find the clueless will resort to silver or gold because ‘its classy and adds value’.
Maybe just go with some nicely drawn/designed artwork instead. No? Ok…
I kinda like Aaron’s tweaked cover. I’m not sure why. Maybe because it’s different from the FOTJ style that I never warmed up to?
The white and blue in the text could come to set the silver off quite nicely, but I’m not very fond of the change on the whole. The metallic treatment on dust-jackets is often striking, but I find that it doesn’t sit too well in the elements and makes the edges susceptible to curling. It wasn’t a favorable outcome for my 20th anniversary copy of Heir, and I can’t see it being any better here.
The straight art is a little bland, I’ll admit, but at least it was one round of text formatting away from looking like a classic X-Wing cover.
I do have to say, though, that it is awfully nice to see the old Rebellion symbol trotted out without any of the Republic/GA doodads that have been added to it over the years.
I think I preferred the old cover, but the new one is still leaps and bounds better than the FotJ covers.
The Coco Chanel part made my day! *lol*
The new cover on the other hand depresses me. It will probably look okay once it’s printed but as a jpeg it’s a major downer. :-/